Condensed - Making Of

My warmest greetings! On this page, I will show you how easy it is to create photo-realistic image of waterdrops with only Adobe Photoshop and a mouse. Let's start with new document (I usually set size to 3200x2400 pixels) and fill it with dark-blue.

Next, add some 3D effect. For this, draw a light-blue line in new layer, using very wide brush (here around 1000 pixels width).

Then, use Gaussian Blur filter (with large setting such as 200px) in order to, well, blur :)

Then merge these 2 layers (Ctrl-E), and apply a couple more effects - first Noise (not much) and then Paint Daubts (again, only a bit).

Now we have pretty good background for our future waterdrops.

Now the fun begins - waterdrops. Create new layer, fill with white, and then in another new layer (!) draw a slighly chaotic oval using sharp pencil tool. Remember, nature never has ideal shapes, so dont use vector tools.

Now spent about an hour or two and fill entire document with drops outlines.

Good, now we have waterdrops outlined, we need to fill them with black color. It is very easy - with magic wand, click anywhere outside waterdrops (make sure Contiguous is checked)...

then invert your selection (Ctrl-Shift-I) and fill with black color using Bucket (G) - make sure Contiguous is NOT checked, or you'll have to fill each waterdrop manually.

And now, hit Ctrl-L to open Levels dialog, and move black and white arrow pointers closer to the middle. You'll see how our blurred waterdrop become sharp and smooth.

Remove white from this layer. You can use the following shortcuts for that:* Ctrl-A* Ctrl-C* Q* Ctrl-V* Q* Del

(this was another professional secret! :-))

Now it is time for nice layer effects. Set layer blend mode to Screen, and use Shadow, Bevel and Inner Glow to make waterdrops look better.

Some more lights and reflections would make our artwork much nicer. Create new layer (with blend more = overlay and opacity = around 50%), select brush tool and white color, and spend another hour putting white dots where light is reflecting in the top of waterdrops (in my case, light is falling from top).

Better, but not yet good enough. We'll need another effect - light reflecting from bottom of each waterdrop. Ctrl-click layer to make waterdrops selected (or right-click layer thumb and choose Select Layer Transparency). Then go to Select > Modify > Contract and contract it by about 5 pixels.

Create new layer, fill the selection with white, then move selection about 10px to top, and hit Del to remove selected area.

Now apply a bit of blur, and set blend mode to soft light or overlay - and you are done!

Comments {60}

Roklong agoNice work. This one is really the best and the most pretty.

lbclong agonot easy to follow this tutorial because you need to add more steps, for drops for example, its not easy to make drops as yours because you don't gave us explanation about shadow, inner glow and emboss ...
btw great work (Y)

colinlong agowe are trying to create an image just like this, but increase it to aprox 4 x 2 m in size ,to cover a wall in our house,do you or any body have an image of around 600 dpi,in order to get the image quality we require

my namelong agolove this work, very good

Knight2k5long agoWE WANT MORE!!! WE WANT MORE!!! :-)

Magiclong agoNicely done! but since am new to photoshop, I need more explanation..(-:

Nguyen Vulong agoso cooool :-O
I really love it (L)

Xarvanlong agoCan't Say Any Thing

Madecklong agoIt's really great, but to add to Pieter, it is true that with the Paint Daubs effect, I didn't get the same results as you... I know that you would probably ask me to register, but It would be nice to detail a bit more how to manage the Paint Daubs effect :-P !

mirolong agoPredivno,
Ochen Harasho

SHIRANlong agoGREAT WORK SIR (L)

RoSylong agoyou are a reall artist i like that... thanx

Amoolong agoSweet Man,
Good Job

Radilong agoit's easy, not worthy of following.
:-s (N)

CerebroJDlong agoThis is gettin added to favourites! Thanx!

Martylong agoHmm.. ;-)
im sucky in this lol
don't understand it well but ok.
nice work anny way.

Jeanettelong agoI got as far as getting the water drops to be smooth but I have not been able to remove white from the layer. The shortcuts that you gave don't seem to work for me

Vinit Kulkarni28 February 2008where is this filter in phtshp cs2 =>Paint Daubs filter

jota6 August 2008fantastic, you are geat

sojo1 November 2008thx for these tutorials.. it's even better that the procedures doesn't contains much details. everyone can discover and play a little bit until desired results is achieved ;)
you're REALLY talented, nice work Vlad!

melong agoI don't completly understand how to do it (I tried it), but the outcome is awesome! Good job! Keep it up! (Y)

airlong ago(U)

Vesnalong agoIt is really good but
I tried to remove WHITE PART from the layer and it didn't work.
p.s. free download is not available
:-)

esnf48long ago(y)

Rob7long agoYou are my hero, your creatios are of great inspiration to me

Tomylong agodont know how to remove the white from layer

Normanlong ago... -thats awesome!

koynlong agonice work...(Y)
can you make some matrix style?

yeahlong agoreally professional work... (Y)

Guenlong ago-drools- This is amazing!

Black Xerolong agoYou are Master of Crafts ... Welldone :-)
(Y)

Pieterlong agoNice! (Y)
I have one problem, I use Photoshop CS2 and when I do the Paint Daubs filter, there are a lot of options and I don't know excactly what do to with this since I'm a real noob with Photoshop. You can mail the solution for this problem to photoshopproblem.10.pdedecker@spamgourmet.com. (this is not my real adress, this is a redirect adress so that spammers can't spam me) Thanks.

Eissalong agoWow....thankyou so much for this wallpapers aren'ta nightmare anymore! :-D

Rajalong agohi it was really good and keep up the good work

chrislong agomasterclass if i ever saw it

roblong agoif only you had put comerty on but great site

D3v:L D3z:Ns11 January 2008kk!! not realistic!!
nice work

rajan 2 May 2008nice man but i still cant get the rite way to do the water drops